Terry’s View – Drilling Down Reveals the Real Winners

Most analyses of what is happening in the Australian property market really don’t capture how strongly individual markets are performing.

For example, the major data companies report that “Australian property prices” rose about 5% in FY2025. Based on that figure, you can understand why many come to the conclusion that the market is lukewarm with only moderate price growth on offer.

But it is impossible to sum up what is happening in the Australian property market based on just one generalised figure. The reality is there are many markets which have exceeded that growth.

Our analysis of the best capital growth performers among the house and unit markets across Australia shows that the vast majority of areas which have led on price growth – both in the past 12 months and over the longer term – are places we have recommended in our Best Buys report and other Hotspots reports ahead of the growth.

We recently examined over 4,500 locations with house markets and/or unit markets which recorded 25 or more sales. More than 1,700 of those 4,500 markets recorded median price growth of 10% or more.

Queensland led with 664 suburbs, Western Australia had 397, South Australia had 298, New South Wales, 258, Victoria, 48, the Northern Territory, 18, Tasmania, 17 and the ACT, 14.

There were also 572 markets with growth above 20%. One of the standout features is that two-thirds of those high-growth markets have median prices below $700,000 AFTER that year of out-performance. In other words, it’s the more affordable areas that are dominating capital growth outcomes.

And of particular note, 200 of them are unit markets, reflecting the rapidly improving capital growth outcomes with attached dwellings.

Those figures show why, when it comes to property investment, you need to drill down. Analysis needs to take the performance of local economies into account, including things like job opportunities, housing availability, infrastructure spending and transaction levels.

Researching on an area-by-area basis is what shows the true picture of the performance of Australia’s property market, and from what we can see, it’s doing much better than lukewarm.